


For Better or For Worse

by shadowhuntingdauntlessdemigod



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Episode: s04e10 Blood Debts, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Episode: s04e09 Dark Waters, episode expansion, olicity - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-08
Updated: 2020-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:33:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23067799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadowhuntingdauntlessdemigod/pseuds/shadowhuntingdauntlessdemigod
Summary: Tag/expansion to 4x10. Felicity knew that Oliver would never leave her. The way he selflessly protected her from the bullets had proved that. But what if he did? What if he didn't have time to care for her and the city? What if another person she loved left her? She knew that on the outside she would appear fine, but on the inside she would fracture.Felicity's thoughts after being told she is paralyzed, and a much-needed conversation with Oliver.
Relationships: Oliver Queen & Felicity Smoak, Oliver Queen/Felicity Smoak
Comments: 2
Kudos: 64





	For Better or For Worse

**Author's Note:**

> Anything recognizable doesn't belong to me. Enjoy!

Felicity had always loved the _click clack_ sounds that her high heeled shoes had made on the hard floor. The sound would echo throughout the entire level of Queen Consolidated, and then through Palmer Tech. It let people know that she was there, and that she either had information or had found something or simply needed someone to babble to. Either way, the sound meant business.

She could hurriedly walk into the Foundry to let Oliver know that she was pissed off, or try her best to sneak up on him or try to cheer him up. She would wrap her arms around his shoulders and plant a kiss on his cheek, trying to break him away from whatever was giving him a hard time.

She had always been able to walk well in the shoes; a talent that she had probably picked up from her mother. She could even run in them, which came in handy when she was needed out in the field for Team Arrow. Felicity knew that Oliver still disliked the name, but it had grown on him and she took the opportunity to use it whenever she could.

These were probably the reasons why the doctors had to tell her the diagnosis ten times over. She understood that she had been shot, she didn’t need to be reminded. She knew what happened when a bullet hit the spinal cord. Felicity had gotten an A+ in both biology and physiology; she understood the human body and what happened to it.

But paralyzed? Her?

“Yes. I am so sorry. The round went into your back. We tried to correct the damage done to the nerves, but there is simply too much. We risk doing further damage if we were to operate again. And you are already weak as is.” The doctor repeated himself over and over, but Felicity refused to believe it.

Her mother’s hand tightened on hers as Felicity asked the question again. “Paralyzed? As in forever?”

The doctor nodded solemnly and flipped the pages back over the clipboard.

“But I can’t be. I have a life. I’m a CEO. I need to walk around and do things. I have a night life,” she caught herself. “Not that kind of night life, God no. But I need to be up and moving and I can’t very well do that from a wheelchair.” Donna wiped tears from her daughter’s face.

“I am truly sorry, Ms. Smoak. I will let you know if anything changes.” With that, he left the room. Felicity and her mother were surrounded by silence, which was only interrupted by the beeping of the heart monitor and other various machines.

“Technically, it’s Mrs. Queen,” Donna remarked under her breath, smiling at her daughter a little.

“Not yet it’s not,” Felicity whispered back.

“Honey, it is going to be fine. I’m going to go outside for a few minutes and call your friends, okay?” Felicity nodded in response, or as much as her weak body could muster. Donna stood up and pressed a soft kiss to Felicity’s hair before wiping her eyes and walking out.

Felicity sighed and lay back against the white sheets, which were almost as white as her complexion. She was completely tired, a level of exhaustion that she had never felt before. Despite the pain medication, everything hurt. Everything was sore and tired. Felicity lifted her head a little to look at her toes.

She willed them to move, prayed to see them twitch even the slightest bit. She put all of her strength into the will to see her lower limbs move.

But there was nothing. No twitch, no sign of hope. They remained motionless at the foot of her bed. She couldn’t feel them. It was as if everything below her torso didn’t even exist.

Felicity bit her lip to avoid crying out. Not because of the pain. Because of her current predicament. She wanted Oliver by her side. She knew how selfish it was, and that he was doing everything that he could to take down Darhk. But a hug from him would have made things feel even the slightest bit better. He wasn’t big on giving hugs, he was too manly or whatever for that, which made the hugs that he did give feel even more special. Just holding her hand in his would have made her feel more anchored and hopeful.

Why wasn’t he there? She had heard his voice vaguely when she had been brought into the ER. He had been there, and hadn’t been back since. Everyone else had told her how much he had wanted to be with her. They were obviously upset at the way he was handling things.

She just hoped, in the deepest parts of her soul, that he was still the same. That he hadn’t gone off the rails and started killing again to get information on the man that had hurt her. She knew that he could resort to that if it were his only option.

Felicity sighed as her overactive brain continued to come up with reasons as to why he wasn’t with her. She had thought that the medication would quiet her mind, but it seemed to do the exact opposite. Had her mom told Oliver that she was…not…ugh why couldn’t she say it herself?

“Paralyzed,” she mouthed, getting the word out from behind her chapped lips.

What if he couldn’t be with her because of her condition? It would take a lot of time and effort to care for her, she knew that. With his life, maybe he just didn’t have the time. She could respect that. Or try to. Or maybe he couldn’t stand to be with her while knowing that he was a direct cause in her injury. Maybe every single time he saw her, instead of seeing the light and happiness, he would just feel the guilt of letting her get hurt.

She didn’t want him to only see that. Her fingers fumbled to find the ring, but it wasn’t on her finger. Felicity sighed again. She seemed to be doing a lot of that lately.

If he wanted to have a normal life—as normal as he could have while being a leather clad arrow firing masked man—she couldn’t be the one to keep him from such a thing. They had never exchanged vows. Hell, they were engaged a full ten minutes before they were ambushed. He still had the chance to back out.

A part of her knew that he never would. That he loved her and would go to the ends of the Earth to protect her. But then there was that tiny annoying part of her brain that kept repeating _‘what if he does leave? What if he can’t take the responsibility or the heartbreak? What if another person that you love leaves you?’_

The last thought was what scared her the most. She couldn’t stand to lose one more person in the already small number of people that she deeply cared for.

Felicity could feel her eyes starting to close as a wave of tiredness swept over her body. Finally her mind was quiet, allowing her to slip into a light sleep.

* * *

_“I’m sorry, Felicity, for everything,” were the first words out of his mouth as he came to sit beside her. His mouth was a straight line as his eyes fought to meet with hers._

_“You have nothing to apologize for,” she whispered in reply._

_“It’s my fault that you in here. And it’s my fault for what happens next…” Oliver trailed off._

_“What do you mean?” Her eyes opened a little more to see him next to her, with his head in his hands._

_“I-I have a duty, to protect this city. They depend on me to help out the SCPD and save lives. Take down the bad guys, you know what I mean.” Felicity nodded, failing to see where he was going. “I just don’t know if I would have time-“_

_“Time to what?”_

_He took in a long sigh. “Take care of you. We have stairs in the loft, so we would have to move. I can’t be here to watch over you and help you.”_

_“You of all people should know that I don’t need a babysitter,” Felicity said, trying to put power behind her words._

_“I don’t know how I would find the time to care for you, Felicity. I have to protect the city. I don’t know if this…commitment will, or even could work. Anyone that I get close to ends up getting hurt, or worse.”_

_Felicity nodded. “I understand,” she choked out._

_“You do?” She nodded again, a tear trailing down her cheek._

_“Go get Darhk. We can talk later.” Oliver kissed the top of her head and walked off, leaving Felicity alone in the room once more. That was when she finally allowed herself to let out a choked sob. Her worst fear had come true._

* * *

When her eyes opened again, there was a certain clarity to everything that she saw. The chair was next to her bed, and it was dark outside. The monitors beeped beside her in the quiet room.

_‘It was a dream,’_ she realized thankfully. Damn her overactive imagination. Taking a shaky sigh of relief, Felicity noticed a figure standing by the doorway.

Sheepishly and slowly, Oliver stepped in and closed the door behind him.

“Hey stranger,” Felicity said, her voice cracking through her parched throat. He walked up slowly to her and sat down in the chair.

“I am so sorry that I didn’t come by sooner. It’s unforgivable.” Oliver looked to her with sadness and tiredness in his eyes. An aura of disappointment had settled over him, and it seemed to be slowly sapping his energy.

Had he come here to tell her that he needed extra time to get to and defeat Darhk? That whatever they were wouldn’t actually work because she would always be a target so long as she was with him?

However, she pushed down the fear that rose in her throat. “Did you go to Bali?” trying to crack a joke. Oliver shook his head and tried to smile. “Beating the streets? Probably a lot of people looking for that maniac.”

Oliver sighed. “I didn’t want to come here until he was dealt with.”

She knew the look of loss in his eyes and opted to ask him anyways. “Any luck?”

“We are working some leads.” There was a darkness behind his gaze as he stared at her hospital bed, not strong enough to look her in the eyes.

“Please tell me that you haven’t gone off the rails.”

“Well,” was his response that squeaked out.

“Oliver, please.” He had killed The Count to save her. She desperately didn’t want to be the reason, again, why he had killed.

“I can’t help but think that the reason why Darhk is winning is because I haven’t been willing to go far enough, and if I had, maybe you wouldn’t be in here right now.” He finally met her eyes. “I don’t know what the point of doing what I do is, if I can’t protect the people that I care the most about.”

It would never stop hurting her to see him like this. Defeated and small, holding the entire world on his shoulders so that others wouldn’t have to feel the burden. He was so selfless sometimes that it made her want to slap him. The team could deal with their own pain. His protectiveness was understandable, but annoying sometimes.

“What’s the point of being the Green Arrow if you lose yourself in the process?” Felicity asked, tears pricking at her vision. She saw his gaze break again and decided that it was time to tell him, if he didn’t know already.

“There’s something else that we have to talk about, with what the doctors said. I’m, uh-“

“I know,” Oliver responded. It was soft and caring.

“My point is,” she started, “we never exchanged vows so the whole better or worse thing doesn’t technically apply.” Felicity spewed the words out quickly, to get them past her shaking lips.

She let the words sink in for a moment before a look of confusion crossed across his face. “What are you talking about?” He looked genuinely disturbed by what she was alluding to, even though a small smile was stretched across his face

“Maybe the real reason why you haven’t been here is because-because…”

Felicity had gotten the sentence out. All that she could do was wait for what his reaction would be. Oliver gave another sad smile and reached into his coat pocket. “The nurse took this off you when you went into the ER. How dare she,” he laughed, sliding it onto her finger. Tears had pooled in her eyes and were spilling out onto her pale face.

His hands grasped her small, cold one. A promise that he would be there with her until the ends of the Earth. “For better or for worse.”

“Yeah,” she whispered, expelling a sigh of relief. How could she have been so stupid? The drugs really were messing with her mind.

She knew—hoped that she knew by now—how he felt. If anything, his proposal and the aftermath had proved that. In the car, he had thrown himself on top of her to protect her. He had jumped into the driver’s seat to get them to safety while the enemies were firing at him and he was completely exposed.

Couple that with the probably hundreds of other times, direct and indirect, that he had put himself between her and death in order to help her. He loved her, and his way of showing it was more than kisses and hugs and happy looks. It was keeping her alive, which was probably his most important mission of all.

“But the Foundry has stairs. Our home has stairs,” she started.

“Just gives me more excuses to carry you everywhere,” Oliver smiled.

“What if the tables aren’t the right height? You need more time in the field and what if I need help reaching something? I can’t watch your back or hack into stuff…”

His hand grasped hers and made her rambling stop. “Felicity,” he said her name slowly. “I may not know the future, but I do know two things. The first is that the Count, Slade, Ra’s, Merlyn, my family, your ex, our friends dying and not dying, we have gotten through all of it, together. The second is that we will get through this. Because nothing, not even hell itself, will keep me from being with the one that I love. From being with you.”

“I love it when you get all romantic, in a threatening, vigilante way,” Felicity whispered as Oliver wiped a tear off her cheek.

“About as romantic as a green, leather archer that spent five years on an island can be,” he joked back. “Get some rest. You look tired.”

“Really?” she gave a short laugh. “Wonder why.” His hand brushed her hair back as she closed her eyes. “I won’t expect you to be here when I wake up. If something comes up, you go. Do you understand? I will be fine.”

“I know you will be.” She caught a smirk as she closed her eyes again. He was protecting her once again, sitting guard by her bedside as she slept. Her hands were wrapped in his, like a tether that he would never let snap. Felicity caught his final words before drifting off. “We’ll both be.”

**Author's Note:**

> Previously posted on fan fiction 1/28/16


End file.
